Black Friday - Consumervilles

Starting a blog about pop culture, it is only appropriate to begin with the biggest event of the year as far as this category is concerned: black Friday. This is the day after Thanksgiving, when various retail stores offer what they call "doorbusters." I went to a Best Buy near my house to bear witness this phenomenon. The line was pretty long when I arrived at around 1 am. The sign in the picture to the right is from an adjacent store about 100 feet away. People had chosen to celebrate their love for the great outdoors by pitching their tents just outside the doors of the Best Buy. This line had reminded me of another familiar line:

A homeless shelter.
Typically a situation most people try to avoid, but for whatever reason, my pavement companions had willingly thrust themselves into the rugged life of homelessness, at least temporarily. I suppose with the markets fluctuating, the nation heading into a depression, they may have been practicing for their near inevitable future.
The fine group of people to the left are waiting to eat.




The fine group of people to the left are waiting for a $300 laptop.











There were several groups like this one waiting on the cold sidewalk outside of the store, forming a small homeless community:


So, it might not have been as intensive as the Hooverville to the right, but it certainly shared some similarities:







Perhaps we can come up with a new name, a new concept for these makeshift temporary towns that last no longer than a couple days: Consumervilles? Perhaps the name is a bit too obvious, but what it shows is how somethings do not really change. The Hoovervilles of the Depression were controlled by their capital restraints, their poverty. The Consumervilles that spring up every year after Thanksgiving are controlled by the same thing: their fetish of the commodity, capitalism. This was not the first line I had stood in during the brief reprive from work and school for the Thanksgiving holiday.

The line at the liquor store the day before Thanksgiving. Knowing its eventual closure for the holidays creepting up on them, people flocked to wait in line for their bottles of alcohol. The comparison is adequate: the people to the right are in line for the exact same reason the people in all of the lines above are waiting. They are waiting to get drunk. While the urge for actual intoxication is literal to the right, the intoxication that those in the Best Buy lines is clear: consumerism!


And while they may look like docile innocent consumers, they could turn on you at any moment.